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Category Archives: Common Sense

This is a short (and not so sweet) blog. Recently, I found out that a couple I know have been dealt a terrible blow. Beginning last January, the husband noticed his wife stopped doing her complicated crossword puzzles. Now he’s dealing with the fact that the love of his life has Stage IV Alzheimer’s disease. While it is unusual for all of this to evolve so quickly, the horrible reality is that they have to deal with this news at a time in their lives when their only concern should be thinking of having fun with their grandchildren.

Also not long ago, I read a letter on my radio program from a woman who commented about a caller who complained that her husband wasn’t willing or able to properly install their child’s car seat. The letter writer told a story about her own family – her husband, also, struggled to properly secure their child’s car seat. Then, not long after doing so, a huge truck “T-boned” their car and killed her husband, injuring his wife (who was the one who wrote to me), but leaving uninjured their 2½ year old child who was saved because of the properly secured car seat.

The lesson here? You NEVER know what the day is going to bring. For those of you who work so hard to preserve the hate and hurt from your past (so much so that the present is ruined, and the future automatically looks bleak), hear me out now:

Today really is the first day of the rest of your life.
Today, YOU are the architect of your life
Today is the day available to enjoy the blessings you do have.

There may not be a tomorrow. Don’t live as though you had all eternity to get fit, stop smoking, and give up abusing drugs, alcohol or food. Be nice to others, work hard at something, give of yourself to someone else, and let go of excuses and “blaming” behavior. You don’t have all eternity. You only know for sure that you have right now.

A young, female graduate of Monroe College in the Bronx, New York, is suing the school for a total of $70,000 she contends is the amount she spent on getting a degree that promised her a job.

I looked up Monroe College on the Internet, and this is what I read:“Whether preparing for a career or simply needing a part-time job, the Monroe College Office of Career Advancement provides expert advice and valuable services to help you. Every student at Monroe College has a Career Advisor, who provides one-on-one assistance with career decision-making, resume and letter writing, and job search strategies. The Office of Career Advancement helps with career assessment, resume writing, job search and strategy, employer recruitment and placement, interviewing skills, and other job search guidance. Registering with E-recruiting allows you to view online job listings, post a resume to the database, and access additional web-based career resources.”

I don’t see a promise or guarantee or money-back offer. The college cannot guarantee against the world’s financial issues. Also, we don’t know how well she did in her courses, or how aggressively she worked on getting a position, or how inventive and persistent she’s been in trying to get herself situated.

I wondered also if she weren’t making a public spectacle in order to bully the college into giving her back her money, as she is heavily in debt and living with her single mother (who is also living on meager resources). I don’t know her motive first hand. I just wonder.

It’s getting more and more annoying that more and more people figure they’re entitled to things just because they want them. That’s an adolescent view (which consists only of a narcissistic perception of the world), and it’s supposed to mature in one’s twenties.

I’m sorry she’s in debt, but she made that choice. I’m sorry she’s having a hard time getting a job right now. Maybe she has to choose something to do which has nothing to do with her degree just to sustain herself and her mom through these rough times that millions of people are also dealing with. I’m sorry she’s mad, but nobody owes her a living. I’m sorry the media sees fit to make a big deal of her actions without some judgment as to the worthiness of those actions.

I’m not sorry I’m mentioning this, as I want to make sure that none of magnificent listening audience slips into this childish state of pouting and stamping feet when life doesn’t go the way you planned or wanted. If there is one thing to learn from this girl, it’s that life doesn’t guarantee anything but the opportunity, and she’s wasting it by whining. If I were an employer, I wouldn’t hire her after reading about these antics. I would want a more mature individual who does what she has to do to survive, and makes the best of it. That’s the kind of person to respect and support.

I love “Law & Order” and “Cold Case” types of programs, because of the cleverness of the characters in discerning truth from lies (either from witnesses or clues at a crime scene). I find it fascinating. Detective Goren from “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” seems to know everything about just everything, which is a plot device that sometimes strains credulity, but, in general, I find the most interesting leaps to be that of a “gut feeling” or a “hunch” which is not easily explained by logic until after the fact.

Some people are better at this than others – perhaps it’s an inner talent that is unique, or maybe that individual just pays more attention to detail, or maybe it’s just the willingness to listen to that still, soft voice that tells you something just isn’t right.

I find that many people who call my radio program with concerns about the behaviors of someone they’re dating already “knew” on some level that something just wasn’t right. But they ignored or denied those feelings because they wanted the fantasy to be true. Generally, these desired fantasies turn into disasters.

One caller earlier this week met a guy online who immediately treated her like he was her fairy godmother. “Zap” with his wand, and they were off to foreign lands for lunch and distant places for vacations. She found out that he was still married, even though he had said he was divorced. She called me all upset and sad.

I told her that she had behaved like a slut (yeah, I said that), because he had money. Certainly, she couldn’t have believed that he loved her – he didn’t even KNOW her! She was gullible and pretty and sexually available and that was what he was looking for. He wasn’t looking for the love of his life. She, however, wanted the princess fairy tale, and she had it for two months. Meanwhile, she had suspended her good sense about why a man would operate like this with no real knowledge of the woman. Answer? Knowledge of the woman was not of interest to him. Showing off and having passionate sex with a very willing woman was what he really wanted.

Instead of worrying about not being able to trust men, and sobbing with great hurt at being dumped, I suggested that she start behaving like the kind of woman a real man without a selfish agenda would value. She didn’t listen to that small voice, and ended up used and humiliated.

Don’t deny what you know in your gut, even in the midst of what seems like the most unbelievable reality. It is unbelievable, because it is not to be believed.

People have accused me of everything from being rigid, to simply spouting common sense. Well, for the folks who think I’m rigid, I have this to say: I have convictions – convictions that I took a lifetime to forge, convictions I stand by, because they make good sense, and ultimately help people to have better lives.

Fifty years ago, most of what I have to say was common sense. Not so now. Today, many values are no longer held in common, and what values are left happen to be undermined daily by forces in government, religion, professional organizations, media, communities, families, friends, neighbors, and even your own impulses.

Honestly, I fear for the growing lack of cohesion in our country with respect to values, morals, ideals, goals, and general insight. When half the country accepts a candidate for the Supreme Court of one gender and ethnic group who says she is superior in wisdom and intent to another individual of another gender and ethnic group simply because of her gender and ethnic group, and the country doesn’t fall to the ground either laughing or outraged, I worry.

That example is one on a huge scale, but no less important is how the evaluation of family, marriage, and child care has been constantly undermined by something as simple as TV commercials.

We’ve seen on TV a commercial for a chewing gum that seems to be an aphrodisiac (because young girls seemingly will jump their boyfriends in front of their parents). And now, we have T-Mobile commercials that have a pretty spokeswoman who has a minor boy attempting to seduce her, as well as a husband who goes all “gaga” in front of his wife, who, when she reminds him she’s right there, says “We’re married….technically.”

This is supposed to be very funny?

We have male penile enhancement supplements being advertised all day and evening (when children are watching), and some lubricant that makes a woman explode with orgasmic pleasure. And on and on it goes.

Back in the day, common sense would have precluded these commercials from airing, because they were tasteless and they undermined the common understanding that some things are personal and private. But now, all the barriers are down. Heroes today are people who sing, dance, play music, act in movies, and run with a ball. People who sacrifice in battle, however, are ignored or impugned.

Car commercials talk about how sturdy and safe a car is, but they do so while showing a situation in which ex-spouses are doing a “child exchange.” Everyone is smiling and appears happy because the car is so nice. There’s nothing “nice” about a broken family for a child.

After years and years of the TV show Friends winning so many Emmy awards, and the stars going on to other lucrative media adventures, young people think “shacking up” and out-of-wedlock pregnancies ARE common sense.

I don’t mind being the lead salmon…I just hope that you will all consider swimming upstream with me and finally stand up privately (and publicly) for common sense.